


the way back

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bad Flirting, Bedsharing, Bickering, Canon Compliant, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Pia shows up because I love Pia, Roadtrip, oh no there is only one bed at the inn whatever shall we do, possibly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:14:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21775852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Jaime and Brienne and Hyle need an inn.
Relationships: (ish), Hyle Hunt & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 111





	the way back

**Author's Note:**

> written 24 October 2019.

The way back to the inn was long and dirty and tiresome, picking a way among boulders, loose rocks, and the short, stunted trees that grew wherever they could find root, looking like the few remaining fingers on some massive hand.

Brienne looked at them — their sparseness, their spartan determination — and saw Jaime.

He spoke as much as they did, and with less sense. It was unnerving really; all through the Riverlands before he’d kept up a running stream of mad chatter — she’d coaxed herself to sleep with his imagined voice a hundred nights — and the man kept silent.

He kept looking at her. Finding fault, no doubt. Her torn face and neck, her scars and clothes. _Can’t you keep away from a fight?_ he said in her mind. 

And he said kinder things too, softer things, impossible to believe even as the daylight crept out of the sky and the inn finally appeared. 

Hyle appeared too: an apparition she was not entirely ungrateful for. At least now someone would speak.

He said: “Is that him? The Kingslayer?”

“This is ser Jaime — this is Hyle Hunt. We’ll be staying,” she said, to the girl who’d come up out of the shadows like one herself. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark dress: she even might be pretty, if she smiled. “Three rooms, and stable the horses.”

“Stable’s got room, but we haven’t. I told him so,” nodding at Hyle, “when he asked before. And no one’s died nor left since then.”

“You do a fine business,” said Hunt, meaning something derogatory, and Jaime said

“Whatever you have will do.”

“Two,” she said to him. “Two’s all we have. And that’s sleeping three a-bed for us. But there’s stew and ale and black bread, and oats for the horses.”

“And a bath,” said Jaime. “The lady has been long in the saddle.” He smiled at the girl, and she covered her mouth to smile back.

Brienne could have pushed him in the dirt.

*

The stew was not bad and the bread was actually good; only the company was horrible. Neither Hyle nor even Jaime could find a peaceful word to say.

Brienne found herself hoping for bedbugs to crawl along his skin and gnaw every tender inch til it was red and painful. May they bite behind your knees, she thought, scraping out the bowl and wiping it down with bread — she hadn’t had such good bread since leaving Tarth. May they bite all along your tender arse, ser Jaime, and I hope they sink teeth into the skin of that precious cock you love so well.

She looked up to find his eyes on her, narrowed to green determination, as if he knew what she’d been thinking.

Surely not. She blushed hot. “Are you able to sleep two to a room without one murdering the other in the night?”

“No,” said Hyle, and Jaime said

“You know better.”

Brienne wanted to sleep with Jaime — she’d done it plenty without incident, hadn’t she? She saw from his expression that he knew it — saw him turning smug — and turned to Hyle. “I’ll stay with you, if you don’t mind.”

Hunt stuttered. “Floor or bed?”

“Wherever there’s room,” said Brienne. She was under no false ideals as to the comforts of a room at the inn.

Jaime considered Hunt’s breadth of shoulder and, for a wonder, held his tongue.

*

  
“Shall my lady take the bed?”

“Floor,” said Brienne, already regretting this game. The bed was both too short and against two walls; if she had a nighttime visitor, she would be less that many options for escape.

And Hyle clearly wanted to believe there was a flattering reason behind her choice. He offered to help with her boots, crept close to her while she was removing her armor, and finally kissed her on the mouth when she let down her guard a moment and smiled at something he said.

She pushed him away. “You know better,” she said.

“I want to,” he whined, which was not convincing; and said “just imagine I’m Lannister,” which turned out to be the exact right thing to say.

Unsurprisingly, he kissed terribly: it was a tedious chore to him. A hand on her breast had a better outcome, and now she really could pretend — at least until he tried to go into her breeches, and she used her knee. “Fuck off.”

“Bitch!” he said. So she slammed her hand in his face, too, and left the room.

*

“You have blood on your hand,” said Jaime.

She did. She wiped it on her shift and crossed her arms again, daring him to ask questions.

Jaime only said: “Do you want the bed or the floor?”

The room was identical to the other, but flipped: bed against a corner, floor bare, window faintly brightened by moonlight.

“Bed,” said Brienne.

  
She woke up in the mid-night, not sure what noise had woken her til Jaime cried out again, whimpering. She hadn’t heard that since the forests, not since Vargo Hoat lisping about _thapphireth_ , since ...

So she knelt on the floor and shook him awake and took him into her bed, lying close together on the narrow mattress.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said — whispered. “It was only a dream.”

“I know.” She dared to touch him now; it seemed almost permissible. Just a brush against his face. “Your hair’s grown long.”

“You weren’t there to cut it.”

Was that reproach in his voice? She couldn’t tell, didn’t answer.

“I dreamt of the men hurting you,” he said.

“They didn’t.”

“You didn’t stay long with Hunt.”

She didn’t reply.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Did he try?” Darkness in his voice, and heat. 

“I told him no.”

“You could have stayed with me. Should have done. I’ve not hurt you.”

He would, though, if she let him. Something of that might have shown: because his hand dropped off her skin, where it had been tracing the edge of her jaw. 

He said: “You look at me like I’ll eat you alive.”

He said: “There is pleasure, too, Brienne.”

She felt her face flame up red — but shook her head, no.

Jaime said, “Then you should sleep on the floor. And don’t come back here, no matter how cold it gets. Or what name you hear me call.”

**Author's Note:**

> jaime is staying in bed & masturbating away his nightmares.  
> ... it could work?
> 
> *
> 
> there’s a scene in ASOIAF where Pia and Peck bump uglies in the corner of Jaime’s tent, while he lays awake and bored. 
> 
> i think of that a lot


End file.
